Palin Says Republican Choice Will Face Obama 'Thuggery'

Sarah Palin says her experience as the vice-presidential candidate on the 2008 GOP ticket headed by John McCain taught her the Republican nominee in the upcoming presidential election will have to face the “thuggery” of President Barack Obama’s campaign machine. Palin also told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Wednesday that McCain’s endorsement of Mitt Romney shows the Arizona senator believes the former Massachusetts governor is best qualified to weather the Obama onslaught.

The former Alaska governor said the 2008 ticket had to confront the “Obama presidential ticket machine and all that it encompassed — and what it encompassed really was, you know, this unscrupulous, gimmicky scheme.”

“And Senator McCain, evidently has chosen Mitt Romney as the one to be the most prepared to face this thuggery — this scheme that he is going to have to face,” Palin said.

Hannity wondered why Romney continued to struggle with the GOP’s conservative base and can’t seem to break the 25 percent approval ceiling among Republicans. Palin noted that Romney hasn’t always espoused the conservative point of view.

“I mean, he still defends to this day that mandate that constituents would have to buy healthcare . . . as he did in Massachusetts,” Palin said. “He said he wouldn’t do that nationally — but he did do that in a state — and that rubs people wrong because the majority of Americans understand how onerous, and burdensome, and job-killing Obamacare is and, you know, the prototype for Obamacare evidently was Romneycare, so that’s a problem there.

“But where people are keeping an open mind today, and where you see the support that Romney does have, the people who are believing that Romney is saying: well, some of the positions that he’s taken in the past, he has done a 180 on it,” she said. “Now he truly is as he preaches — pro-life. Now, he truly does believe in reducing taxes and the barriers to the working class as we try to progress without the government doing it for us. So positions have changed in Romney's camp, as he espouses today.”

Palin said McCain’s endorsement of Romney “is a reminder that we must have as our aim, defeating . . . social big-government, job-killing policies. It is not to defeat one another — it is a contested, aggressive, pretty rough-and-tumble primary process that we go through.”

“McCain found his person much sooner than I was able to find my person,” Palin continued. “No, I’m still in that process with probably 70 percent of Americans trying to decide.”

Hannity asked Palin about former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his apparent decision to go on the offensive against Romney.

“Newt has every right to defend his record and his intentions on how he would like to lead this country because there were evidently untruths told about Newt and what it is that he has done in the past — and what he wants to do in the future,” Palin said. “So he now is evidently going to go on offense and start talking about what the truth is — he has every right to do that — again, that’s part of this rough-and-tumble process that we go through. At the end of the day, though, we have to remember that we can campaign aggressively, but fairly and truthfully.”